Here’s a fitting book to begin the year with! If only I had discovered it closer to New Year’s Day, it would have been even more appropriate. In any case, A Dinosaur A Day is a sort of calendar book, highlighting a different genus of dinosaur (or other Mesozoic reptile) for each day of the year, thus covering 365 creatures in total.
Each dinosaur gets an illustration, a descriptive paragraph, and a short list of factoids and statistics. Authored by Miranda Smith, the text is generally fairly accurate, though there were a few cases where I thought she either extrapolated a little too much, or neglected to mention an interesting specific unique to the species in question. With 365 entries to fill out, though, she does a fairly good job overall.
The illustrations are loosely stylized, and while many are fairly good, there is some variation in the level of accuracy. As is often the case, the feathered dinosaurs tend to bear the brunt of the dodgier reconstructions, typically sporting the dreaded “feather sleeves” instead of more wing-like arrangements. It has also been pointed out to me by several people that some of the illustrations in this book appear to have been copied from other paleoartist’s work, such as Julius Csotonyi‘s Borealopelta, and the T. rex on the front cover.
The book changes up the format a bit from page to page to keep things visually interesting. Some dinosaurs get a whole page to themselves, while most are grouped together in no particular pattern.
Occasionally, a black double-page spread will group specific animals together to illustrate a particular theme of some sort; sometimes these black pages will highlight a taxonomic family, while other times they will showcase something more nebulous, like dinosaurs with similar lifestyles.
Though the art style remains consistent enough to appear as though it’s all the work of one illustrator, multiple individuals are credited in the book (which perhaps contributed to the varying levels of accuracy throughout). Jenny Wren, Juan Calle, Xuan Lee, Max Rambaldi, and Olga Baumert are all credited as having contributed illustrations, though there’s no indication of who did what, other than mentioning Juan Calle as having created the front cover.
The pages dedicated to single species are generally a little more richly illustrated than the others, and occasionally have a vibe that reminds me a bit of De första dinosaurierna, though of course I rate that book’s illustrations on a much higher level.
While it may be titled A Dinosaur A Day, it also includes several non-dinosaur sea reptiles and pterosaurs, though the book does mention at the beginning that they do not belong to the same lineage as true dinosaurs.
I’m sure I’ve said it before, but a good rule of thumb in illustrating feathered dinosaurs is to simply draw them as much like a regular bird as possible. The benefits of this approach can be seen with the extinct birds that feature in this book, which all look gorgeous, and avoid the mistakes that plague the various raptor dinosaurs elsewhere in the book.
A curious inclusion is the Ashdown Maniraptoran, the only unnamed dinosaur in the book. While the description is as brief as anything else in the book, it’s still quite a bit more detail than I think can be reasonably inferred about the animal at this time, considering it consists of a single neck vertebrae. It makes me wonder what sort of list the author was following, that they even came upon this dinosaur in the first place. Perhaps in reading up on Darren Naish‘s work?
Overall, A Dinosaur A Day is a fun book for young dinosaur nerds. It has plenty of creatures ready to be memorized, and the calendar-based format is an interesting way to introduce such a large number all in one book. While some of the illustrations could be better, overall A Dinosaur A Day provides good information and plenty of content. I recommend checking it out if you get the chance!
Dino Dad Reviews 